


handsome in hindsight

by adeleblaircassiedanser



Category: Veep
Genre: Alcohol, Barebacking, Dirty Talk, Exes, F/M, Idk how to tag this just read it, M/M, Multi, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:21:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7801702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeleblaircassiedanser/pseuds/adeleblaircassiedanser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know,” he says, and with his eyes glinting like this he has a certain pull, like a succubus. “You make it sound- that’s not how it really was.”</p><p>“Sorry, help me out here?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	handsome in hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> Well, once upon a time, in a deleted scene from the pilot episode, Dan called Amy "angel" one time, and it turns out I had Feelings about that. Who knew. Here, have a thing. Title from "Fairytale" by Sara Bareilles. The whole "Careful Confessions" album is pretty much #mood for this piece.

“I don’t know,” Amy says. “I was young and stupid and, yeah, obviously, I knew how you were but- I thought I was in on it?”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“Jesus Christ, Dan, I don’t know. Your total contempt for all aspects of humanity. I thought it was, like, ha ha, people are the worst- and they are, believe me, I fucking hate people. But early on…”

 

“What,” Dan prompts when she trails off, topping up her glass.

 

“I thought I was different. I- you used to tell stories about all the dumb ex-girlfriends you’d fucked over and I laughed. I just thought I was so different. It’s the most obvious, Taylor Swift bullshit.”

 

Dan’s looking her head on; she feels uncomfortable, like she’s under examination. “You’re really upset about this,” he observes.

 

“Fuck you,” Amy says, and moves to stand. She had been upset, in a distant way- these aren’t good memories by any means, there’s a reason she hasn’t examined them in years- but Dan being here, revisiting them upon her with his piece-of-shit detached affect, is infuriating.

 

“Hey, hey, Ame, wait-”

 

“Dan, this is pointless.” It’s her own fault for letting Jonah talk her into this, honestly- he’s such a prepubescent child of divorce, not understanding why all his friends (well, _friends_ ) can’t be friends with each other-

 

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? Stop being-”

 

“Don’t fucking _apologize_ to me!” _Shrill,_ Amy registers a moment too late. She takes a deep breath. “Look. It doesn’t matter. A million years ago, I weighed ten pounds less, Selina was still in the Senate, and you were kind of a shitty boyfriend. We really don’t need to rehash it any further. There was fault on both sides.”

 

Dan makes an exaggerated surprised face. “Amy Elizabeth Brookheimer, admitting fault?”

 

“I’m done with this conversation.”

 

Dan nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Same. You want another drink?”

 

Amy shrugs. “Sure.” _What difference does it make?_

 

They make it through another couple of rounds just catching up, talking shit about everyone they know- and hadn’t Selina’s second book been god-awful, and can you _imagine_ Catherine with a kid? After a while Amy begins to think it might not be so bad to be on good terms with Dan, the week or so a month he's in DC and not anchoring out of a studio somewhere in midtown Manhattan. Eventually, though, with the edges of the room golden and fuzzy, Dan does his eyelash thing at her.

 

“You know,” he says, and with his eyes glinting like this he has a certain pull, like a succubus. “You make it sound- that’s not how it really was.”

 

“Sorry, help me out here?”

 

“With us. It wasn’t- Taylor Swift and John Mayer or whatever-”

 

“Wow, that’s a mighty specific reference, there, Egan-”

 

“You’re barely three years younger than me- it was hardly, like, the guileless ingenue and the callous older gentleman-”

 

“Did you always start talking like a harlequin novel when you’re drunk? This feels new.”

 

“Shut up. I’m saying-” and he ruins the effect by pausing to take a long drink, flapping one hand. “It’s not like I didn’t like you. You make it sound like I never liked you.”

 

“Wow, don’t hurt yourself, there, Dan- You didn’t _not_ like me, you say? Stop, you’re embarrassing me- you’re too kind-”

 

“Ame, shut up. Look at me. You know I think you’re a fucking knockout. And you’re a smart girl. We get each other, right? We always did.”

 

Amy can’t help it- her jaw drops open. “Dan- you’re not seriously hitting on me right now.”

 

Dan shrugs unrepentantly. “Is it working? Come on, why not? Maybe it’ll jog our memories. We can finally figure out What Went Wrong.”

 

“You’re such a fucking dicksack _weasel_ ,” Amy says. “That’s what went wrong. I’m a human woman, and you are a rodent.”

 

Dan, bless whatever gods or demons are listening, is quiet for a while. Finally he frowns a slight frown and asks, quietly, with a little less posturing- “Because of Jonah?”

 

Just the fact that Dan doesn’t use a nickname here is jarring. Amy blinks. “What? What about Jonah?”

 

“Is it serious? You exclusive?” Amy bristles. She doesn’t want to be nailed down on this question, not even inside her own head, and especially not by Dan.

 

“It’s not about Jonah.”

 

“I hope you’re not exclusive,” Dan continues, as if she hadn’t said anything, and there’s a viciousness in his tone now that had been absent today, an acid- “since we were still fucking as of… two weeks ago? He tell you that? Your Congressman Ken Doll boyfriend?”

 

Just how drunk is he, actually? It’s not like him to get… maudlin, like this. The target keeps moving, like a light reflecting off a multifaceted mirror. She’d forgotten this feeling, from those days- just how _exhausting_ it was trying to keep up with Dan’s emotional leaps and pivots.

 

“I don’t know, Dan. It’s late. Drink some water.” Amy pulls up the Uber app in her phone. She enters her address, tonight, and not Jonah’s. “Night.”

 

Dan has his head pillowed on his crossed arms, slumped across the table, looks half asleep suddenly. Amy, on some deluded instinct, pats him on the shoulder. Comforting, or something.

 

“Night, angel.” She doesn’t have anything to say to that, so she leaves. In the car she tries not to despair over the apparent lack of a middle ground in her love life between Buddy the teetotaling cowboy who was so boring she could fall asleep during sex and whatever this incestuous soap opera mess is.

 

 _This is what comes of not focusing on your career_ , she hears, and weirdly enough it’s Selina’s voice. Of all people to lecture her on not getting derailed by men.

 

\---

 

The next afternoon, Amy finds herself laid out on Jonah's bed, one arm thrown over her eyes, and undressed from the waist down. She can concede that she needs to, ought to relax, but decades of experience have taught her the things they tell you, as a woman, to do- sun pose or whatever, facials and backrubs- don't work. This, she's found, does: Jonah dragging two of his enormous fingers up her slit, unhurried, his touch light then heavy by turn. It's just distracting enough that she can hold a conversation without tensing her own spine up so badly that it snaps.

 

"God, babe," he's saying, and that's the drawback to the fact that it's Jonah Ryan doing this- "you oughta post a little sign, y'know. One of those yellow ones, but mini. Slippery when wet. Someone could get hurt."

 

"Don't call me babe," Amy says. She's too cranky to even contest the rest of it- she's not sure when three nights came to constitute a dry spell, but here she is, soaking the sheets over some ninth-grade level finger action. "Ugh. So I talked to Dan like you said."

 

Jonah's fingers still. Amy looks at him and sees his eyes stupidly wide and his mouth opening and closing, fish-like.

 

Amy takes pity on him. “Well, he’s still a festering shit fire in a two-piece suit, if you were wondering.”

 

“He’s not that bad,” Jonah says. Amy sits up on her elbows.

 

“What?” she says incredulously. “Yes, he is! He is _very_ bad!”

 

Jonah shrugs. “I don’t know.”

 

“Jesus fiddlefucks christ,” Amy exhales, flipping over to lay on her stomach. Jonah reaches to cup her ass in one massive hand; she arches into it absently. “This is, like, a real thing for you.”

 

“I guess,” Jonah says. “I mean, whatever, we’re friends-”

 

“No you’re not,” Amy interrupts. “Dan doesn’t have friends. He has marks and accomplices.”

 

Jonah laughs, which- she hadn’t actually been joking, but whatever.

 

“Irregardless,” he says. “We have- a lot of history, y’know?”

 

“You have a lot of _sex_ ,” Amy counters. Jonah glances at her sharply. Somehow his idiot face looks even dumber when he’s being serious.

 

“Well, yeah,” he says. “Is that- should I have told you? Sorry, I-”

 

Amy waves a hand. “No. I don’t know. Just- does this sister wives shit not seem weird to anyone else? I think I got just about enough of the Mormon lifestyle when I, y’know, dated one for eight months.”

 

Jonah laughs too hard at this. Amy feels sometimes that the gender roles are reversed, between them; Jonah laughs at all her jokes, takes her constant interruptions in stride, is either genuinely interested in everything she says or is a better actor than she’s ever given him credit for. It’s odd.

 

“I dunno,” he says. “What can I say? I like hot people, and I’m bad at saying no.”

 

“Inspiring,” Amy says drily, allowing herself to be pulled on top of him. He fusses with the buttons on her shirt impatiently.

 

“He is looking good, though,” she concedes.

 

“Right?”

 

“Either he still had on his TV makeup or-” Amy lets out a sigh as she sinks down on Jonah’s cock- “or New York really agrees with him.”

 

“Too pretty for his own good,” Jonah agrees, and their eyes meet. She can tell he’s feeling her out, testing the waters. She rocks forward a little harder, encouraging; she’s curious to hear where this goes. Weird shit comes out of Jonah’s sex brain at the best of times.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “God, babe, I wish you could see- he cries for me, you know.” Amy raises her eyebrows.

 

“I’m fucking serious,” Jonah says, and moves to slam her down on her back. “He begs, and cries, and fucking crawls for me. You should see him. I should film it for you.”

 

Amy does her best to roll her eyes, but her voice comes out embarrassingly breathy: “You and your- fucking- porn obsession.”

 

“Or you could just watch,” Jonah says.

 

“You want me to watch you fuck my ex-boyfriend Dan Egan,” Amy repeats, just to make sure she has this straight. On a better day, she would sound skeptical, but right now she’s a little distracted.

 

“Harder,” she says. “You can go harder.”

 

“Fuck yeah,” Jonah says. “Fuck yeah. You feel so fucking good, sweetheart. Touch yourself.”

 

Jonah is king of the most basic, bargain-bin VHS porn dialogue. Amy ought to be mortified to find her hand obeying him, thoughtless. “You could touch yourself while you watch us,” he’s saying. “Or you could wait, and we’d fuck you afterwards. Yeah? We’ll take turns.”

 

Amy means to point out that Jonah would never in a million years last long enough for that to be possible, but instead she comes, shuddering and shrieking around him. “Sorry,” she says.

 

“No,” Jonah says. “God, you’re beautiful. Kiss me.” He comes with her biting down on his tongue, because he was raised in a cave and that’s the kind of thing he likes (and she _knows_ that about him.) A thought occurs to Amy about fifteen seconds too late.

 

“We should probably be using a condom, right? If we’re going to do this whole dick-sharing thing.”

 

“I thought you were on the pill,” Jonah says, looking kid-and-the-cookie-jar guilty.

 

“No, I am,” Amy says, moving to find a washcloth. “But we don’t know where Dan’s been.”

 

“Damn,” Jonah says, contemplative. “You’re right. I never thought about that.”

 

 _Moron._ Amy thinks. _Morons, both of them._

 

So what does that make her?

**Author's Note:**

> Wow so we all got through that, huh? What is going on!! Come talk to me if you care about this ot3 at adeleblaircassiedanser.tumblr.com


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